Vanderbilt Medical Center to cut more than 1,000 positions

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is expected to cut several hundred more jobs this week as part of a plan to eliminate more than 1,000 positions by the end of the year.

It's the second round of mass layoffs in recent months at the hospital, after about 300 employees lost their jobs earlier this summer.

"It is a difficult day here at Vanderbilt. It is a difficult period in healthcare," said VUMC spokesman John Howser. "The impact to our nursing staff is mainly at the leadership and support staff levels. The nurses that interact with patients directly, beside care, there is very minimal impact to that."

"For the past several months, we've been re-designing workflow, work functions, job functions and going about this in a very systematic way to address the need to reduce operating costs by $100 million for the current fiscal year and by $250 million by the next fiscal year, 2015," Howser said.

They say it's a problem at other major universities across the country, and one that other hospitals in this area could experience as well.

"Smaller community hospitals will be very threatened financially. There will potentially be some of them that will close," Howser said.

The affected Vanderbilt employees will remain on the payroll for next 60 days and will still get benefits. The administrators will finish this round of layoffs by the end of the year. Meanwhile, there are managers and career counselors on the campus this week to help.